Smither, Devon

I completed my PhD at the University of Toronto in 2016. My dissertation, "Bodies of Anxiety: The Female Nude in Canadian Art, 1913-1945," critically examined the status of the nude genre in Canada, its history of controversy and censorship as it connected to gender, modernity, and Canadian art historiography.

Recent publications include a chapter in, Censoring Art: Silencing the Artwork (London: I.B. Tauris, June 2018), the exhibition catalogue essay for Alter/Nation at The Kamloops Art Gallery, (2017), and recent book reviews in RACAR (Spring 2018) the Literary Review of Canada (May 2017).

I have also presented my research at academic conferences and invited talks and lectured on Canadian historical art, contemporary Canadian Art, and the work of early modern botanical illustrator, Maria Sibylla Merian at the University Art Association of Canada, the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative Conference, the Renaissance Society of America Conference, and the Feminist Art History Conference.

I joined the faculty at the University of Lethbridge as an Assistant Professor in 2016, prior to which I taught at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. Current research projects include an examination of the self-portraits of Canadian artist Pegi Nicol MacLeod, and a longer-term research project on the women artists whose work formed the foundation for the Whitney Museum of American Art.